Today, precision agriculture technologies (PATs) can be considered a tool for the management of the farm which allows the agricultural entrepreneur to optimise inputs, reduce costs, and offer the best quantitative and qualitative agricultural products. In Italy, the number of digital farmers is still low; therefore, it is not yet possible to assess with certainty the actual economic benefits that technologies bring to the farm. To bridge this gap, the paper proposes, through the analysis of a case study, an assessment of the economic efficiency of an Italian cereal farm that has invested in precision agriculture. The results reveal that, unlike what is reported in the literature, after the technological adoption, the farm keeps both the yield and variable costs stable. However, the major benefit is recorded in the decrease in labour costs (−20%) and in the reduction of pesticides (−53%). The increase in the quantity of nitrogen (+11%) and of seed distributed in the field (+5%) indicates that, in the face of a significant increase in total costs due to the capital invested in technology, the farm aims to intensify production rather than reduce agricultural inputs.

Recently, the agricultural sector has had to face several challenges related to the innovation process, the most significant of which seems to be that of its digital transformation. As a consequence, the issue of digital technology adoption is becoming of important scientific interest due to its potential impact on products, services, processes, and new business models. In general, the adoption behavior can be indirectly explained by studying factors that lead a firm to innovate; among these factors, the literature emphasizes the function of networks. The objective of the paper is to investigate the role of networks as key drivers of precision agriculture technologies adoption. To achieve this goal, qualitative research was developed by using 8 case studies recollected among that few Italian farms which can be defined as innovative for having already experienced precision agriculture. Results show that only a few farms can develop and manage innovations internally; success often requires cooperation between individual actors and organizations. Finally, the paper provides some practical advice and a set of propositions for those farms that are trying to achieve digital technological innovations.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014), by 2050 the world society will need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 40-70 percent compared to 2010, and reach the end goal of net zero emissions before 2100. At the same time, the global food system is now responsible for up to one-third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions ( Gilbert, 2012 ). This means that, given the present conditions in terms of climate, demography and technology, the world society should be capable of progressing, not regressing, toward a sustainable rural economy before 2050, relying on a per capita availability of arable land, not matching the current world population distribution, which is around 0.20 hectares at present. On this premise, the present article claims that peasant agriculture oriented to family livelihood will be a key sector in the next wave of economic development. Therefore, in order to support this statement, the Albanian agriculture case study will be considered. This is because the case of Albania is a distinctive case in Europe of peasant agriculture, it being structurally oriented to family auto-consumption and local food markets. Referring to a rural economy based on peasant agriculture as a modern one seems to be a paradox. Nevertheless, climate change is pushing the ontological shift towards an agro-ecological paradigm in which an ecologically driven conception of value addressing societal reproduction rather than capital accumulation is emerging ( McMichael, 2012 ). Thus, the present article aims to describe the role of peasant agriculture in economic development under the constraint of climate change, applying this topic to the empirical case of Albania.